The Uses of TDCS

The dramatic potential benefits of tdcs is just beginning to trickle through our society. Imagine having a tool that has such widespread uses as alleviating depression to helping people learn a language faster, or helping with pain to improving math skills; and this tool is easy to build and still shows little side effects after substantial research. This is transcranial direct current stimulation (tdcs).

As tdcs spreads into the mainstream, people will come up with weird and wonderful uses. I decided to outline some major categories how people may use the technology of tdcs for clinical as well as cognitive enhancement purposes.

1.       From the medical establishment, clinical uses are the most prevalent of course: depression, bipolar (especially with depression), pain, speech disorders, stroke etc. Although some montage prescriptions may be frequent treatments (two or more times per week), the particular montage prescription with a particular condition will most likely have been researched in a small clinical study, so you would think risk is low. On the other hand as people begin to experiment themselves and they may be mixing tdcs treatments with other medications, chance an adverse reaction is greater.

2.     Some people will use tdcs to receive a mental boost on a frequent basis, nearly daily to keep sharp, and keep motivation and mood up. Obviously the chances of side effect are great here. Long term steady use has not been thoroughly studied, and it begs the question, if you use it all the time to maintain some level of personality and performance, what happens when you stop?

3.     Some people are using only for a particular grand task or project: learning a new skill, learning a new language, working on an important project at work. For this situation the person would receive a treatment more frequently (couple times a week or more) when doing the skill or work, and it should improve this skill during the other times. For example someone receiving treatments while studying for the SATs a couple times per week for a few months while studying, could see a better score when they take the SAT without receiving treatment, of course. Personally, this is what I do. Particularly if I have a large writing project to do, I will give myself treatments at early in the day, or the night before, while writing and/or studying about the topic. I feel my writing is more focused and more productive. Since this is generally a shorter period of time, the risk is lower.

I discuss adverse reaction. As more people do tdcs, adverse reactions will happen. someone that is unstable who probably shouldn’t have done it, might hurt somebody, hurt themselves, end up in an ER, and then tdcs will be the culprit. It happens when certain vitamins become popular, and think of the adverse reactions with drug trials…
And lastly, of course, if ever in doubt about a medical condition, consult your doctor before receiving treatments. Also to minimize risk and any side effects, you can start with lower levels of stimulation (1mA or less), and stimulate less frequently (once a week or less). If no side effects or adverse effects are noticed, then you can increase frequency or current amplitude.